South Side Pastor praying for 19-year-old grandson shot yesterday

Says violence will knock on your own door

 

By Chinta Strausberg

After losing his 35-year-old son in a very suspicious drug overdose death three-years ago, Rev. Gregory Daniels, pastor of The New Mt. Sinai M.B. Church, Wednesday is asking for prayers for his 19-year-old grandson, Diamante Buenarosa Daniels, a black Hispanic who was shot last Tuesday while walking at 51^st and Artesian.

His heart heavy, Rev. Daniels said his grandson, who is the son of his late son, was walking when his attackers shot him. “He told me he did not know his attackers.

“My grandson has a bullet lodged in his stomach that the doctor’s can’t take it out because it may damage his liver, small intestines and other organs,” Daniels told this reporter.  “We’re in a wait-and-see situation.”

Daniels said Buenarosa-Daniels, a black-Hispanic, had two jobs and was not involved in any gangs. He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital and is “fighting for his life.” “He was walking with another friend. Someone accosted him on the street and he tried to defend himself” and he was shot. He did not know his attackers.”

Rev. Daniels called the shooting of his grandson ironic because it was just last Sunday that he preached about the spate of violence in Chicago and how “we need to get more involved because it will come knocking on your door one day and as the bible says you speak things into existence from the words from your own mouth.”

Ironically, Daniels’ son, Gregoire Daniels, 35, was killed in Centralia, Missouri on June 13^, 2010. “He died of a deadly mix of cocaine and heroin.  My son was not a drug addict. He died under strange circumstances. He was married to a white Hispanic woman in Chicago and now I’m looking at his son laying up in the hospital fighting for his life” Daniels said his son worked with him at his construction company and that neither he nor his grandson was dealing in drugs.

“This is a terrible time in my life, but God took me through that and he’ll take me through this,” Daniels said referring to his son’s death and now his grandson’s clinging to life. “This is happening to somebody every day…to other families and now we are getting a taste of it again…. I pray to God for his divine intervention.”

Daniels said he works every day to get families jobs and to counsel their children, but that does not seem to be enough to “stop the blood from running in our streets.”

Asked what would he tell the shooters if he could face them, Rev. Daniels said, “I would tell them this is not the way to solve problems with guns and that he should at least own up to his situation and turn himself in so that we can get some sort of justice, get him off the street and get him some help.

“A lot of times just locking them up is not the answer. We need resources. We need programs and solutions for these people who have turned so far to the left that it doesn’t seem they can come back to the right.”

Daniels, who runs his United Voters for Truth and Change, has dedicated his life to helping ex-offenders to turn their lives around. “We get them back on path to recovery.”

Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host. You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.